The Children of the King

Twelve-year-old Cecily, her older brother Jeremy, and their mother flee WWII London for the safety of Uncle Peregrine's country manor. Once there, Cecily discovers two boys hiding in some nearby ruins. Hartnett's gift for language deftly conveys both the sublime and the mundane in life. She grounds the book's fantasy elements with a heartfelt examination of the hardships endured by civilians in wartime.

Continuing her string of novels exploring the effects of war on innocents (The Silver Donkey, rev. 9/06; The Midnight Zoo, rev. 9/11), Hartnett's latest book tackles the home front. In the early days of World War II, twelve-year-old Cecily Lockwood, her older brother Jeremy, and their mother flee London for the safety of Uncle Peregrine's country manor. Jeremy chafes at being packed off to the country, since he desperately wants to contribute to the war effort, and tensions escalate between mother and son. Meanwhile, Cecily and an evacuee named May discover two boys dressed in fifteenth-century clothing hiding in the nearby ruins of Snow Castle, as Uncle Peregrine begins to recount the legend of Richard III and the young "Princes in the Tower." As always, Hartnett's gift for language deftly conveys both the sublime and the mundane in life. "[The sun's] heatless light reached over miles of marsh…and finally crawled, with a daddy-longlegs's fragility, up the walls of Heron Hall to Cecily's window." Hartnett grounds the relatively minor fantasy presence in the book with a heartfelt examination of the pain and hardships, endured by civilians in wartime. Cecily is a naive, spoiled, but well-intentioned heroine, effectively contrasted by the quietly independent and mature May and impetuous, brave Jeremy. Over the course of the story, Hartnett's characters waver between feelings of helplessness, anger, and fear; ultimately, they find the necessary resolve to carry on. russell perry